Olive Oil Hunter News #244

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Choosing Cocoa Powder

Unsweetened cocoa powder has intense chocolate taste and few calories. Also, ounce for ounce, natural cocoa is the food with the highest flavanol content, one of chocolate’s most important polyphenols. Surprisingly, cocoa gives baked goods deeper flavor than chocolate alone.

Cocoa is sold in one of two ways: natural, with a deeper taste and lighter color, and Dutch-processed, with a milder taste and darker color. Dutching uses an alkaline ingredient to counter cocoa’s natural acidity. While it’s possible to use the two interchangeably with only slight differences in taste in the finished dish, Dutch processing reduces cocoa’s polyphenols, so consider choosing natural cocoa instead.

Quick Kitchen Nugget

Straining Cocoa

Though cocoa comes as a powder, it can form lumps. Always sift it through a fine strainer, pressing it with a small whisk or the back of a spoon to break up any lumps and push it through the mesh. In recipes that call for other dry ingredients, sift it right into the same bowl and whisk well to combine.

For Your Best Health

Harnessing the Power of Cocoa

A new report from the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS) found that taking daily cocoa supplements has surprising anti-aging potential. The findings reinforce the value of flavanol-rich plant-based foods for healthier aging.

Investigators from Mass General Brigham and Augusta University looked at changes in five age-related markers of inflammation among participants who received daily cocoa supplements over several years. They found a decrease in hsCRP, an inflammatory marker that can signal increased risk of cardiovascular disease, suggesting cocoa’s anti-inflammatory potential may help explain its heart-protective effects. Their results were published in Age and Ageing.

Nutritional interventions have become an increasingly attractive solution for slowing inflammatory aging, or inflammaging. Cocoa extract was shown in smaller previous studies to reduce inflammatory biomarkers, thanks to its flavanols. To bridge the gap between these studies and humans, researchers launched the large-scale COSMOS trial, which examines the effects of cocoa extract on cardiovascular disease and whether inflammaging may explain those effects.

“Our interest in cocoa extract and inflammaging started on the basis of cocoa-related reductions in cardiovascular disease,” said corresponding author Howard Sesso, ScD, MPH, associate director of the Division of Preventive Medicine and associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham health care system. “We also appreciate the important overlap between healthy aging and cardiovascular health, where aging-related inflammation can harden arteries and lead to cardiovascular disease. Because of that, we wanted to see whether multiyear cocoa extract supplementation versus a placebo could modulate inflammaging—and the data suggests it does.”

Between 2014 and 2020, Brigham and Women’s Hospital led the COSMOS trial, a large-scale randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial with 21,442 participants over 60 years old, finding that cocoa extract supplementation decreased cardiovascular disease mortality by 27%.

In this new study, researchers collected and analyzed blood samples of 598 COSMOS participants to measure several inflammaging biomarkers: three pro-inflammatory proteins (hsCRP, IL-6, and TNF-α), one anti-inflammatory protein (IL-10), and one immune-mediating protein (IFN-γ). Comparing changes in these biomarkers measured at baseline and at one-year and two-year follow-ups, hsCRP levels decreased by 8.4% each year compared with the placebo, while the other biomarkers remained relatively consistent or increased modestly.

“Interestingly, we also observed an increase in interferon-γ, an immune-related cytokine, which opens new questions for future research,” said senior author Yanbin Dong, MD, PhD, director of the Georgia Prevention Institute and cardiologist/population geneticist at the Medical College of Georgia/Augusta University. “While cocoa extract is not a replacement for a healthy lifestyle, these results are encouraging and highlight its potential role in modulating inflammation as we age.”

The team will continue to evaluate the COSMOS trial to determine whether the cocoa and multivitamin regimens can curb more severe inflammaging, as well as other important aging-related health outcomes.

“This study calls for more attention to the advantage of plant-based foods for cardiovascular health, including cocoa products rich in flavanols,” added Dr. Sesso. “It reinforces the importance of a diverse, colorful, plant-based diet, especially in the context of inflammation.”

Fitness Flash

A Boost for Better Lungs

According to research presented at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, eating fruit may reduce the effects of air pollution on lung function. The study was presented by Pimpika Kaewsri, a PhD student from the Centre for Environmental Health and Sustainability at the University of Leicester in the UK.

As Kaewsri explained, “Over 90% of the global population is exposed to air pollution levels that exceed WHO guidelines, and ample research shows that exposure to higher air pollution levels is associated with reduced lung function. Separately, a healthy diet, particularly one high in fruits and vegetables, has been linked to better lung function. We wanted to explore whether a healthy diet or specific food groups could modify or partly mitigate the known adverse effects of air pollution on lung function.”

Using UK Biobank data from around 200,000 participants, Kaewsri compared people’s dietary patterns, including their fruit, vegetable, and whole grain intake, with their lung function (FEV₁,or the amount of air exhaled in one second) and their exposure to air pollution in the form of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5). PM_2.5 concentration is the amount of very tiny particles, 2.5 micrometers or smaller, released into the air by vehicle exhaust and industrial processes, among other sources. The team also accounted for other factors such as age, height, and socioeconomic status.

For every increase in exposure to PM_2.5 of 5 micrograms per cubic meter of air, the team observed a 78.1ml reduction in FEV₁ in the low fruit intake group compared to only a 57.5ml reduction in the high fruit intake group in women.

“Our study confirmed that a healthy diet is linked to better lung function in both men and women, regardless of air pollution exposure. And that women who consumed four portions of fruit per day or more appeared to have smaller reductions in lung function associated with air pollution compared to those who consumed less fruit,” Kaewsri said. “This may be partly explained by the antioxidant and anti-inflammation compounds naturally present in fruit. These compounds could help mitigate oxidative stress and inflammation caused by fine particles, potentially offsetting some of the harmful effects of air pollution on lung function.”

Kaewsri also noted that, in the study population, men generally reported lower fruit intake than did women. “This difference in dietary patterns may help explain why the potential protective effect of fruit against air pollution was only observed in women,” she added. Kaewsri plans to extend the research by exploring whether diet can influence changes in lung function over time.